


The Window

by thedragontongue



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Horror, Thriller, Witchcraft, fic was originally for fb writing event for the page The Dishonored Fan Database, hope someone will enjoy, never got to submitting it bec i was chicken but here it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 08:07:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13853562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedragontongue/pseuds/thedragontongue
Summary: Everyone knew about the murders by now, it was the talk of the entire city. One after another… a person was killed. This continuous string of incidents finally urged the Lord Regent, Hiram Burrows  to take action. However, everyone secretly knew his forces wouldn’t----no couldn’t do much to stop the murders. How could they? After all, the murders were highly connected to witchcraft.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short story's events happened during Dishonored 1's timeline but is based on Piotr Jablonski's digital painting for Dishonored 2, "Knocker at the Window."
> 
> Here's the link to it on his ArtStation: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/adVLX

The old lonely man stared out onto the street, peering through his only window in his sparse upstairs bedroom for quite some time. Solemnly, he watched how the wind shook the trees and the moon cast a strange glow over the town.

 Something gnawed at him. A cruel memory or perhaps an ill reflection of past events that he couldn’t quite remember.  His memory was failing him again.

The man sighed in vain, scratching his head in frustration and walked away from his curtainless window. His joints buckled and popped against his weight despite his thin figure as got back into his cold bed.  Once settled and somewhat comfortable laying under thinned moth-eaten sheets, the man turned his head towards the window, watching with tired eyes on how the moonlight poured into his dilapidated bedroom. Elongated shadows casted easily about on his dusty wooden floor. The man swore to himself he could see figures rise from the dust and dance about in his bedroom.

  What was it that he forgot now? His continuous loss of memory troubled him deeply. The man closed his eyes, heavy in frustration, trying to let his feeling pass and fade into the hopeful blank abyss of sleep---and so he did.

Hours later, he woke up to the sound of his piano playing downstairs. The man’s eyes bulged as he looked at his locked bedroom door that held whatever or whoever downstairs at bay. The soft melody now trailed into a lullaby that he knew from somewhere or sometime long, long ago.

The man told himself he was hallucinating due to stress, his breath started to falter. He forced his eyes shut in fear. The sound was restless, almost toying with him, the pitch and tune rising all the while and then abruptly stopped. 

The man rubbed his eyes and looked up at the stark white top of his room, the paint chipping and curling. Fear still consumed him and his thoughts. He couldn’t sleep, madly wondering if the intruder remained downstairs or not.  

A single knock suddenly caught him off guard, his eyes became frantic--- looking around the room to find the source of the sound.

Another knock, louder than before.

The man hid behind his bedsheets in fear.

_It isn’t real._ He told himself. _Just a dream. A terrible dream._

 The knocks continued as the tapping of fingernails came from his bedroom window now.  
  
The man heard the window’s latch flip up and the window creak open; cold wind rushed through and chilled the old man down to his bones. He could see his hot breath while he cowered underneath his sheets. The man felt someone watching him on the edge of his bed. With one scared eye open, he peeked, to see who it was---a woman.

A pale voluptuous woman, in her mid-forties who had dark hair streaked with grey and glassy clear blind eyes that stared back at him like old friends. She had her hands to her sides, yet the woman’s fingers moved like snakes and her nails long and yellow as if coated with aged snake poison.

“W-who are you? What do you want?”  The man asked her.

The woman stared at him still as she opened her mouth and an awful deathly groan filled his bedroom. The man, of course, screamed terribly and hid back underneath his covers.


	2. Chapter 2

Shaking underneath his covers, the old man’s memories returned to him in the fray of fear and danger. His mind reeling while his eyes were closed, visions appeared in obscure flashes.  
  
Blood, blackish red and congealing on the floor connected into various lines and symbols. Bodies piled up high in rooms of old deserted homes once cared for long ago now rotting away.  The Outsider’s effigy cast out of crude rusted iron pieces, surrounded by candles the wax pooling on the decaying fungal floor.  Bones, both human and whale placed in front and center sacrificially.

The woman.

The man gasped, his eyes wide open still underneath the thin covers of his bed. The woman was his first sacrifice to the Outsider.

As if in response to his realization, a single outstretched bony hand with yellow claws pulled the sheets from his grasp.  

“Have mercy.” The Man begged her, cowering on his small bed. “I have repented!”

The woman smiled wickedly at the man, the moonlight changing her form. Her pale curvy body turned translucent, thinning until skin turned a sick yellow and clung from bone. Deep wounds stretched across her contorted figure as her beautiful hair fell into clumps and dissipated onto the bedroom floor. Her eyes gouged out, empty sockets staring right through him.

“I shall give you no mercy,” The woman replied in disgust, breathing in the cold air with difficulty. Her breath emitting small flies from the hollow of her mouth and through the gaps of her teeth. “For I am vengeance.”

The old man wept in acceptance of his fate. The woman smiled at him once more and laughed at the sight of a once powerful young man who’s quest for immortality became a farce. Lonely with no one to remember or save him, the woman gleefully stabbed the man with her yellow claws repeatedly.  His blood sprayed the chipped white ceiling and  after hours in agony the man finally succumbed to death finding only further desolation to greet him.

 

* * *

 

  
Two Months Later

  
“What’s your report on this matter of supposed witchcraft?” Lord Regent looked grimly at his soldiers who were tasked to solve the strange case. “The masses have hounded me senseless about it as if it was a high priority. I presume everything has returned to order?”

The two soldiers glanced at each other, only one speaking in response with a gruff tone. “No, Lord Regent. The killing continues, the latest crime that we know of was an old man who lived in a condemned building near the outskirts of Dunwall who perished. His body mangled, when we arrived his building was completely locked with only a single window open in his bedroom. We only knew of the occurrence because a citizen had complained to our lower patrol about the smell.”

The other soldier pitched in now with a low voice; clearly new, clean shaven, and still getting used to the uniform. “We also found some items leading to believe either he or the perpetrator is related to witchcraft, Sir.”

“So it is true then. We had a file on him being a supposed warlock years ago but I had thought all this would have been that C-” Hiram Burrows sighed, putting his black gloved hand to his forehead to massage his temples. “Never mind. Clearly someone had it in for the man, it was only a matter of time.”

“What are we to do then?” The gruff soldier asked Lord Regent.

Lord Regent glared at the two soldiers pulling an ink pen out the black ink-well on the right side of his desk, writing hastily on blank parchment. “I’ll send word to the High Overseer. You’ll be dispatched to greet whichever overseers and their hounds are sent by tomorrow morning at the docks. Snuff out this perpetrator from their hiding place, even though they’re doing us a favor by taking out those who practice witchcraft with magic. Now get out of my sight.”

The soldiers nodded to Lord Regent and left; returning on patrol at the old man’s neighborhood. As they passed by his condemned building they could almost swear they heard the soft tune of a piano playing and laughter trailing with the wind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ta-da. Ghost/corpse woman is the only one who gets a happy ending. I was also super inspired by the way Guillermo Del Toro's films tackle ghosts and monsters along with Dishonored's take on the supernatural so this little fic is an ode to my weird love of horror. Thanks for reading and as always comments and critiques are most welcome.


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